Boredom key to new worlds
IF there’s one phrase designed to instil dread in adults – especially at this time of year – it’s “I’m bored.”
Functioning like a cattle prod, when uttered by kids it goads grown-ups into action as they desperately search for the next stimulating, distracting, engaging activity to keep the children amused, hopefully content, and certainly out of their hair for a while.
Whether it’s more toys, electronic devices, movies, YouTube, theme parks, trips to the beach or a pool, so often parents and carers reach for anything (particularly their wallets) to stave off those words and the concomitant attitude it generates.
But instead of functioning like children’s personal entertainment directors over holidays and weekends, we need to allow them the time and space to grow bored; to see the state as a positive thing, instead of fearing it or taking it as personal criticism.
While there’s no doubt times are different from when we were kids – those Arcadian days when we apparently all played without adult supervision ‘til the sun went down being consigned to the past, with notions of stranger danger, sun-safe practices and fortress mentalities dominating modern parenting – it doesn’t mean children can’t entertain themselves.
Reading, quiet play, solitude, watchto ing clouds, stars, encouraging makebelieve and even silence all allow kids the mental space to think and grow.
Why is boredom – especially in children – feared? What is boredom?
The Latin word “taedia” (to be sad or weary) was frequently used in Roman times and eventually turned into the Christian “acedia” – according to Zomordi, the “noonday demon of listlessness and restlessness” – a feeling which made it difficult to work or pray.
These were transformed into the states of melancholia during the Renaissance and later, the French idea of “ennui”. In other words: Bored. Bored. Bored. Maligned, misunderstood and mostly feared, boredom’s blamed for everything from binge drinking, overeating, bad driving, risky sex to all manner of vices and mistakes. Put simply, many people will do anything avoid the feeling. They’ll also do whatever it takes to circumvent the condition in kids.
As Maria Popova, the creator of the website Brain Pickings, says: “We treat boredom as ebola, something to be eradicated.” Yet Dr Sandi Mann, psychologist and author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom is Good, claims that not only does boredom make us keen to search for different and more meaningful activities than those at hand, but believes “we all need a little boredom in our lives”.
The reasons for this are manifold. Not only can boredom spur other activities, such as daydreaming and creativity, it forces people to reconsider the tasks they’re engaged in (or not engaged in) and speculate on alternatives.
In other words, it can be both beneficial and a stimulus for change. Yet, instead of embracing it, we do whatever we can to ensure it doesn’t happen. Just look at the money poured into the entertainment, video/gaming and sporting industries as examples.
According to Dr Neel Burton: “This has only made things worse, in part by removing us even more from reality. Instead of being satiated, we are desensitised and in need of ever more stimulation – ever more war, gore, and hardcore.”
Burton is discussing adults, so imagine what our efforts to combat boredom, to ensure our kids don’t experience it, is doing to them.
Dr Vanessa LaPointe, author of Discipline Without Damage, believes children should “sit in their own boredom for the world to become quiet enough that they can hear themselves”.
Allowing downtime creates the psychological and emotional space for the mind, freed from distractions, to wander and hopefully arrive at inventive and resourceful solutions.
Childhood expert Dr Teresa Belton has long argued our recent expectation that children should be constantly active and diverted could hamper their imaginations and thus creativity.
Creativity potentiates the ability to problem solve. Being “bored” also enables time to think, ponder, daydream and thus be peaceful and mindful. Instil these qualities in children and they’ll carry the benefits into adulthood.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell once said: “A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.”
Boredom is not a disease to be wiped out, but the rich fertiliser which allows the gardens of imagination and possibility to flourish.
BOREDOM IS NOT A DISEASE TO BE WIPED OUT, BUT THE RICH FERTILISER WHICH ALLOWS THE GARDENS OF IMAGINATION AND POSSIBILITY TO FLOURISH